Where is the news?

According to wiki.answers.com, there are over 1600 news channels in India – 1600!!!

When 24-hour news channels were announced, I was one of the many people who were excited by the prospect. I had grown up on a staple diet of The Illustrated Weekly and Frontline, and I imagined a world where that kind of informative journalism would not appear on my television screen.

Alas! Things didn’t pan out as I thought it would. In fact, today I consciously avoid watching any of those 1600 channels.

I surf through the TV listings of the various news channels and there is not a single in-depth investigative program. If you were to rate the importance of topics to the general Indian public based on the kind of programs that our news channels put out, it would read something like this:

Politics

Personalities

Sport

In a country racked by one scam after the other, not one news channel has felt it worthwhile to dedicate a program, not even one hour per week, to follow up on these scams.